Heart disease continues to be the number one cause of death in the United States. An estimated 375,000 people have a genetic form of heart disease known as familial dilated cardiomyopathy. This occurs when the heart muscle becomes weakened in one chamber in the heart, causing the open area of the chamber to become enlarged or dilated. As a result of this, the heart can no longer beat regularly, causing shortness of breath, chest pain and, in severe cases, sudden and deadly cardiac arrest.

A CIRM funded study by a team of researchers at Stanford University looked further into this form of genetic heart disease by taking a patient’s skin cells and converting them into stem cells known as induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), which can become any type of cell in the body. These iPSCs were then converted into heart muscle cells that pulse just as they do in the body. These newly made heart muscle cells beat irregularly, similar to what is observed in the genetic heart condition.

Upon further analysis, the researchers linked a receptor called PGDF to cause various genes to be more highly activated in the mutated heart cells compared to normal ones. Two drugs, crenolanib and sunitinib, interfere with the PGDF receptor. After treating the abnormal heart cells, they began beating more regularly, and their gene-activation patterns more closely matched those of cells from healthy donors.

These two drugs are already FDA-approved for treating various cancers, but previous work shows that the drugs may damage the heart at high doses. The next step would be determining the right dose of the drug. The current study is part of a broader effort by the researchers to use these patient-derived cells-in-a-dish to screen for and discover new drugs.

Dr. Joseph Wu, co-senior author of this study, and his team have generated heart muscle cells from over 1,000 patients, including those of Dr. Wu, his son, and his daughter. In addition to using skin cells, the same technique to create heart cells from patients can also be done with 10 milliliters of blood — roughly two teaspoons.

In a news release, Dr. Wu is quoted as saying,

“With 10 milliliters of blood, we can make clinically usable amounts of your beating heart cells in a dish…Our postdocs have taken my blood and differentiated my pluripotent stem cells into my brain cells, heart cells and liver cells. I’m asking them to test some of the medications that I might need to take in the future.”

The full results of this study were published in Nature.